Thursday, December 16, 2010

Let the fun begin

Before I start, I have to mention that this is blog post #200. Yay me !!! \o/

The second part of the Incursion expansion is now upon us. The learning skills have finally gone the way of the dodo. My Orca named QNS Grand Antonio (yes, I settled on Montreal's well-known strong man with bus-pulling dreads) is now assembled, fit and ready to rock. I did get a Noctis and trained it to a whopping level III; I may train it to IV to get better tractor range but after a month of industrial skills I need to give some love to combat oriented skills. And now that all the boring skills are done, and all the new ships I wanted are purchased, and I still have a more than decent cushion of ISK, I can now concentrate on doing the thing I love above anything else in EVE: vaporizing player-owned ships, or getting mine vaporized.

I did go on a long solo roam yesterday, but for a patch day it was pretty quiet in Gallente and Amarr Low-sec. The only ship that maybe would have given me a nice fight was a Wolf, but I didn't engage him with my T2-fit Stabber for a few reasons: 1- he was sitting at Zero of a sentry-protected gate while I was orbiting him Vaga-style, 2- even though we targetted each other we didn't dare suffer the wrath of the sentries, and 3- the Wolf dropped a can for me to loot to start the festivities but I'm wise enough not to get within scram range of an assault frig. So after a couple minutes of staring at each other we went our separate ways. I went to a planet to see if he would follow but instead he jumped out or logged out, and I didn't see him after.

A few jumps later I had high hopes of catching another Stabber that was ratting, but he did a good job at avoiding me. The first time I saw him I landed 65km away from him, and when I started approaching him he warped off to another belt. I followed him but where I had warped to 20, he had warped at 100, and I wasn't even fully out of warp that he had warped off again. I was still able to follow him but this time he had had enough of a lead and when I came out of warp he was nowhere to be seen. Damn, am I that scary? Do I have to offer ship replacement to get a fight?!

The only ships I saw after that where a bunch of Harbingers and a Legion camping a gate (yeah, right!). I decided to back-track a bit and head to Old Man Star, but when I jumped in we were exactly 3 in Local. Yep, OMS was dead yesterday. I decided to check the nearby Low-sec systems towards Syndicate but I only saw more empty space, with whoever was in Local either docked up or at POSes. One of my Montrealer buddies, Dandrane, was flying in the area so he first visited OMS which was still dead and then came to meet me, and he got a bit lucky because hot on his tail was an Astarte, Ishtar, Vexor, and a couple more ships I can't remember. But in all, nothing much that Dandrane's Vexor and my Stabber could take on. After another short staring match we both headed to OMS to see if the situation had changed (it had not) and then it was time for me to dock up and hit the sack.

Let's hope I get a bit more lucky getting some much needed The PvP action over the coming weekend.